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20G
Correction of judicial
abuses. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Regulation of the
provincial niagibtracy.
[l.-iUfc—
Civil troubles were not adapted to extinguish such
ideas. As we liave seen, tlie nobles filled all judi-
cial offices’. The institution of a supreme court
by Eric XIV. had failed. The king’s court was
closed, or at least not so held as the law prescribed.
At the diet of 1600 complaint was made that the
king’s Court of Error (rattai-e-ting) had not been
held within the memory of man. To Charles IX.
the kingdom owed the first ordinance for the con-
duct of trials^. In the preamble he says, that
although Sweden’s written law pointed out how
proceedhigs should be taken in suits, as he had
also himself, together with the council, directed in
1593 by a public mandate, confirmed by Sigismund,
that no process should be entertained in the supe-
rior courts unless it had been first investigated by
the courts of the hundred and the justiciary, and
then brought by appeal before the king, who be-
hoved to elicit the whole truth; yet such regulation
had not been observed, so that he was daily over-
whelmed with endless complaints, which had never
come before the inferior court. The chief reason
was, that the lawmen and judges of the hundred
did not themselves sit in their courts, but appointed
others in their stead, who could neither read nor
write, and had little insight in the law ;
whence it
ensued, that many unjust judgments, by reason of
violence and corruption, were pronounced, and
many heinous offences remained unpunished, whei’e-
fore God visited the land and people with plagues
of all sorts. To this were added great disorder
and CQjifusion from illegal purchases and mort-
gaging of land, generally practised in the kingdom,
both secretly and in houses of entertainment.
Therefore it was commanded that all lawmen and
judges of hundreds should themselves sit in their
courts, especially at three seasons of the year fixed
by law, on pain of forfeiture of their office. The
causes which were remitted by them to the king,
were to be heard every year at the fair of Disting
iu Upsala, whereat the councillors of state, the law-
men and judges of hundreds must attend, to sit in
court as the king’s naemnd, upon causes brought
before them by appeal, yet not upon those in which
they had themselves previously given judgment.
There must all the doom-books of the past year be
delivered up, and all bargains, exchanges, mort-
gages, and redemptions of real property, after they
had been legally called or investigated in the hun-
dred court, be promulgated and enrolled in the
" minute-book of the i-ealm," with other provisions
tian bote (which was 120 ortugs, less than a rixdoUar) ;
but
the kindred stubbornly refused, and wished without fur-
ther parley to break their necks, or eject their father from
the land which he held. " Therefore is it our will and advice,
that ye with all your kin should so arrange it, that ye be re-
conciled, and satisfy yourselves with reasonable and moderate
botes, that there may be good understanding and agreement
between your kin and theirs. VVliereto we exhort you in the
best meaning." A sentence of Gustavus 1. at Calmar the
Thursday after Lady day of 1532, is also illustrative of this
subject. Jon Germundson and his heirs brought a suit
against Peter Paulson and his accomplices, for a murder
which he with five others had perpetrated a year before
upon Jon Gerniundson’s brother, whom he, without any
cause, had shot like a dog. Peter Paulson’s proxy contended
that the deed had been lawful, because the deceased had
some years before slain a kinsman of the accused, and wished
to have counted life for life. It was proved that this kinsman
was only wounded, not killed, wherefore sentence was passed
that wound-botes should be paid for this, but that Jon Ger-
of the like nature. In the mandate of December 4>
1602, it was ordained, according to the statute of
the diet of Linkoeping two years previously, that
two such royal courts should be held yearly, in
Upsala at the Disting, and in Linkoeping at Peter-
mass-tide. In his letter to the council of the 29th
June, 1604, the king orders that six judges of
hundreds should come to the court to adjudicate in
such suits of law as might occur, who should be
relieved after some time by others ’. The troubles
of the time? prevented these attempts to regulate
the administration of the law from being per-
manently efficacious. But thus the erection of the
supreme court by lung Gustavus Adolphus was
prepared.
The ordinance issued by the king in 1C06, con-
cerning reeves, bailiffs, and other officers ^, must
be the first legal regulation of the inferior pro-
vincial administration, as Gustavus Adolphus and
Charles XI. regulated the superior by the office of
prefect (landshofding). The reeve (fogd) is to
appoint a quarterman (fierdingsman) in every
parish, and a bailiff (lansraan) in every hundred.
The quarterman shall collect iia the manse the
taxes of the parish *, and deliver the proceeds to the
bailiff at the spot where the hundi’ed-court is held,
with the attestation of the minister as to the
amount. Then the bailiff shall deliver the sum
collected within the hundred to the reeve, with
proper attestations of his receipts, and the reeve
shall then answer with his account for their fur-
ther proceedings ^. Doubtless these relations an-
ciently subsisted, and were here more precisely
regulated, though the adjunction of the clergy can
hardly be older than the Reformation. Complaints
have been made among ourselves of the secular
position of the priesthood, whereby they become in
so many resjjects a connecting link between the
government and the people. These secular occu-
pations may exceed their due measure, but to
them this order mainly owes its political position
in Sweden.
Charles, fond of engro.ssiug to himself the man-
agement of business, showed the same turn in the
regulation of trade. On occasion of a dispute be-
tween the burgesses of the kingdom, referred to
him as administrator, he drew up a project "for
the regulation of the towns of this realm s," on
which was founded their subsequent division into
staple-towns and country-towns. He sets out with
the position that the places of greatest resort and
niundson should have the right of requiring the full man-
bote from his brother’s murderer. Reg.
’>
The salary of the lawman was very considerable. Charles
IX. writes, June 10, 160U, to Count Axel Leyonhufvud,
" The
salary of the lawman of Westgothland, with the cess which
you caused levy against the will of those in the jurisdiction,
amounts to 6000 dollars." Reg.
I
Ordinance anent processes. Upsala, Feb. 25, 1598.
3
Register for 1604.
3 Ibid. We omitted to note the precise date.
* The minister of every parish shall state the number of
marriages. Letter of May 20, 1609. The quartermen ob-
tained a remission of one-half the yearly taxes, Nov. 7, 1607,
as respected Gestricland and Dalecarlia.
5
By his mandate of August 4, 1607, the king forbids the
reeves on pain of death to mix up the accounts of one
year with those of another; "which they so often do, that
their thieveries cannot be detected."
6
Stjernman, Commercial and Economical Ordinances
(Commerce-och Economie-Fijrordningar), i. 133.
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